After writing about two presidential elections in 1920: The Year of the Six Presidents, and 1960: JFK vs. Nixon vs. LBJ, Pietrusza tackles another election in 1948: Harry Truman's Improbable Victory and the Year That Transformed America. Pietrusza's book explains the issues, campaigns, and little-known happenings surrounding the four main presidential candidates: the Democrat Truman, Republican Thomas Dewey, Dixiecrat Strom Thurmond, and Progressive Henry A. Wallace.
Harry Truman
At the beginning of 1948, Pietrusza paints a dismal picture for Truman. Error-prone, undignified, and in the shadow of the great Franklin Roosevelt, President Truman was unpopular. Even FDR's son, James Roosevelt, tried to draft Dwight Eisenhower for the Democratic nomination. Even uglier were Truman's earlier racist comments that Pietrusza reveals from Truman's diaries and conversations. Alarmed by the violent situation in the South, however, Truman started pushing for civil rights legislation.
Truman kept pushing and fighting- a key to his election victory. Pietrusza not only describes Truman's feisty whistle-stop campaign in the fall, but the trial-run tour in June, where Truman honed his strategy of attacking the "do-nothing" Republican Congress and using facts culled from WPA guides in his speeches to connect with localities along the way. Pietrusza observed, "Harry Truman, stripping for battle, was relearning something he already knew. Americans love a fighter- and they love a show."
Strom Thurmond
The civil rights legislation that Truman was pushing raised the ire of southerners. Some southern delegates walked out of the Democratic convention. Eventually they nominated Strom Thurmond under the Dixiecrat label, hoping to throw the election to the House of Representatives. As Thurmond made speeches condemning civil rights- which he claimed would throw southern society into chaos- he was putting his African-American daughter, Essie Washington, through college.
In addition to this contrast, another involved the lack of support from southern leaders or politicians for the Dixiecrats. Despite the widespread opposition to civil rights and integration, many southern politicians did not embrace this third party movement. Pietrusza surmises that these politicians were reluctant to support the Dixiecrats because they were afraid of losing their elective offices or patronage if they rebelled against the Democratic Party, which was strongly entrenched in the South.
Henry A. Wallace
The other third party movement was the Progressive Party led by Wallace. Pietrusza describes Wallace as dabbling in mysticism and loathing Truman for replacing him as Vice-President and then ousting him from the Secretary of Commerce job after Truman became President. Wallace was a threat to Truman's left, potentially poaching liberal Democrats for the election. One reason Pietrusza suggests why Truman supported civil rights was to entice the liberals, along with African-Americans.
But Wallace did Truman a favor by leaving the Democrats. Pietrusza makes clear that the Progressive Party was infiltrated and influenced by Communists and Wallace seemed oblivious to it. The Communist label dogged the party. That meant that disgruntled Democrats, including Eleanor Roosevelt, held their noses to support Truman. Also, Truman and the Democrats didn't have to defend themselves against damaging Communist charges- the Progressives absorbed that blow.
Thomas Dewey
At first, Pietrusza presents Dewey as a hard-charging attorney, successfully taking on organized crime in New York. Highly organized and efficient, he became New York governor and the Republican nominee in 1944 and 1948. With Truman so unpopular, Dewey was comfortably leading in opinion polls early in the campaign. All that was needed for Dewey to become President, according to his campaign advisers, was: don't make a mistake.
That was in itself a mistake. Dewey, an aloof and arrogant person, refused to slug it out with Truman. There were no attacks and no specifics when discussing policy. Republican dignity must be maintained. Pietrusza concluded that Dewey was also a victim of his 1944 campaign. Having done well with Midwestern farmers in 1944, Dewey concentrated on the Northeast in 1948. As a result, normally conservative Midwestern farmers switched to the Democrats. In the end, people never warmed to Dewey. Even the wife of Dewey's running-mate, Pietrusza mentions, voted for Truman.
Pietrusza's 1948 is a very informative, incisive, and entertaining book. It discusses the hot-button issues of the time. You can start to see the transformation in America that Pietrusza suggests in his title: civil rights, a new Red Scare, and television were all developing. Plus, 1948 is a great behind-the-scenes look at the campaigns.
1948: Harry Truman's Improbable Victory and the Year That Transformed America by David Pietrusza
Sterling Publishing, 2011, 520 pages, hardbound
ISBN: 978-1-4027-6748-7
William L. Wunder - BA in History, University of Iowa, 1994, with Dean's List honors. History Buff- constant reader of books in American ...
